Meet Puneeth Meruva, Partner at Trucks Venture Capital

Puneeth Meruva is a Partner at Trucks Venture Capital, an early-stage VC firm that funds entrepreneurs building the future of transportation. Long before Puneeth became a venture capitalist, he was an “automotive guy.” While Puneeth was born in Hyderabad, India, he lived for many years as a child near Stuttgart, Germany. His father was a mechanical engineer who worked in automotive, and a job opportunity had brought him to the “cradle of the automobile” industry, with the rest of the Meruva family tagging along. Surrounded by big auto brands like Porsche and Daimler, Puneeth began a lifelong fascination with cars and motorsports. In the late 2000s, the Meruvas moved again to another automotive hub, this time to Fort Wayne, Indiana. In those adolescent years, Puneeth envisioned following his father’s footsteps by becoming a software or robotics engineer in automotive. For college, he attended MIT, graduating with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Like many ambitious college students, Puneeth sought to broaden his working knowledge and boost his prospects post-graduation through a string of internships at big tech companies including Microsoft, BMW, and Uber. By his senior year, Puneeth was well on his path to fulfill his long-standing dream of working as an engineer in automotive when one of his mentors, who was a venture capitalist, suggested Puneeth consider a job in venture capital. Puneeth was open to the idea. He reached out to a partner at Trucks Venture Capital, joining the team for a one month internship. His original plan was to return to MIT for his Master’s, but Puneeth quickly found himself immersed in the nature of the work of venture capital. After graduation, he joined the firm full-time as an analyst. Four years and several promotions later, Puneeth last year became the youngest partner at Trucks Venture Capital at only 25 years old.

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Sam: You had a stellar rise in venture capital. You went straight into an analyst position at Trucks Venture Capital in 2019 after graduating from MIT, making partner four years later. Could you share more about that rise?

Puneeth: I think a lot of it can be attributed to two main factors: a supportive set of mentors and timing.

Trucks is a small firm—there are four full-time people on the investment team, including myself. When I first joined, it was just me and the three partners that founded Trucks. From the beginning, they were extremely supportive of me and were deeply invested in my personal growth. We had discussions about my ambitions to eventually become a partner, and they laid out a clear path for me that outlined exactly what I needed to learn and provided me with the resources needed to develop the skills I needed to reach that level. They also supported me through several external factors like immigration, which allowed me to focus as much as possible on growing and honing my craft. Our team is extremely close, and the trust, support, and guidance my partners have given me have been instrumental in my journey. 

I think joining the right fund at the right time also played a significant role. I joined Trucks towards the end of our first fund, and I came on board full-time right before we kicked off our second fund. This was a critical period for the firm where a lot of things were taking off exponentially, as well as a time where we were formalizing a lot of our processes and the way we do things. It was a period of significant growth for the fund that aligned with the time where I started to find my footing at Trucks and grow in my role at the firm. This not only exposed me to a lot of the elements that go into building a successful fund, but also gave me the opportunity to work on them early on in my career and put my stamp on them.

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Sam: What do you invest in at Trucks Venture Capital? What gets you excited as an investor?

Puneeth: We are a seed-stage, transportation-focused fund, and our thesis is to invest in companies that make transportation cleaner, safer, or more accessible. This gives us a fairly broad definition of what transportation means. We originally started off, and still remain, very automotive-focused. But over the last few years, we've broadened our thesis to include more types of mobility like aviation, logistics, space, micromobility, construction, agriculture, maritime, etc. Essentially, anything that moves people or goods—or helps move people or goods—falls within our scope, as long as it meets our cleaner, safer, or more accessible mission.

At the moment, I find two areas to be of particular interest. The first is the decarbonization of transportation. A lot of the efforts within this topic have been focused on the electrification of passenger vehicles, but I’m personally super excited about technologies like hydrogen or novel battery chemistries that unlock zero-emissions solutions for heavy-duty transportation like aircraft and trucks. The second area is robotics and autonomy/automation, which I believe is going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment. Given the recent advancements in AI and foundation models, we’re seeing a lot of fascinating new companies that are rebuilding traditional tech stacks used for autonomous vehicles or robotics to be far more efficient than ever before.

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Sam: What would you say are the skills you need to be a good VC?

Puneeth: One of the most important skills required to be a good VC is the ability to understand and learn about new topics very quickly. At Trucks, we're fortunate to invest in a specific vertical, so we have the opportunity to build deep expertise over time. But even then, especially at the seed stage where you have to move quickly, you don't always have a lot of time to build deep knowledge in a new space. This is also particularly tricky in transportation and deep tech because we’re often investing in nascent technologies, hardware, chemistries, supply chains, use-cases, etc., where there’s not a lot of published literature already out there that you can rely on. This is where it becomes really crucial to know how to identify the right experts to reach out to and build upon their experiences and perspectives to form your own opinion. 

I believe another really important skill to be a good VC is to be very process oriented and have good systems thinking capabilities. I think this is where my undergrad education in engineering really helped me, because it taught me how to take big problems, unpack them systematically, and analyze them in a structured way. This kind of thinking has been really helpful when making decisions about which companies to invest in and has even been really instrumental in how we’ve shaped our internal processes.

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Sam: What’s your favorite part of venture capital?

Puneeth: I think my favorite part of VC is that it's a career where your job is to be really curious. My mind definitely likes to get lost in tangents, so the fact that we get to spend every day learning about a bunch of different companies and ideas and constantly switch contexts is really exciting and engaging to me. I see myself as a very curious person, and I love that I get to explore a lot of different directions and pull at a bunch of different threads at once. That's probably my favorite part—just the constant opportunity to learn.

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Sam: What would you say is the hard part of being a venture capitalist? 

Puneeth: I think a lot of the challenge lies in working in spaces where there isn't much pre-existing literature or knowledge to rely on. This is especially true when you're new to VC. VC is very much an apprenticeship-type career, and the only real way to learn the ropes is through experience—taking a lot of calls, attending meetings, and gradually building up your expertise. The learning curve is steep, and it’s one that you need to scale quickly. You’re also usually put in front of founders, LPs, other investors, etc. pretty early into the job, so you need to carry yourself in a way that reflects well on your fund and know how to effectively “sell” the fund even when you’re still early on in the process of learning the ins and outs of VC. It's a tricky balance, especially when there aren't many resources available to guide you.

Operating in that gray area can be particularly tough for younger investors who are new to VC or didn't come from the venture or startup world, like me. I was fortunate to have some great mentors—both my partners at Trucks and others I met through the EVCA early on. That support helped me navigate the steep learning curve that comes with joining VC.

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Sam: Where do you see yourself in a decade or two from now?

Puneeth: I really enjoy the work I'm doing at Trucks and love the team that I work with. It’s a place that allows me to work in an industry (transportation) that I have always been deeply passionate about, and it’s one that gives me the opportunity, autonomy, and responsibility to build something really exciting in the space. I hope to continue to be with Trucks over the coming decade or two.

My long-term goal is really what it’s always been: to do work that is intellectually engaging to me and makes a meaningful impact. I genuinely believe that transportation is one of the defining industries of our generation, and its importance will only continue to grow in the coming years. Being at Trucks gives me the opportunity to fulfill this goal.

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